Specializing in bilateral cooperation, DIMA is expanding its reach to Latin America and the Gulf countries. Founded by Brazilian businesswoman Luana Ozemela, the company is headquartered at Qatar Financial Center, the financial center in Doha. Acronym for Development Impact Managers & Advisors, DIMA operates in the management consulting area. “Our goal is to provide services to both Brazilian companies that want to do business with Qatar and Qatar as well as Qatari investors looking for investment opportunities in Brazil,” explains Ozemela.
The company offers facilitation services. These include development cooperation for Latin American governments that want to partner with Qatar, such as knowledge transfer and joint bilateral projects. “We can supply this regional demand,” she says. “We implement initiatives and project structuring aimed at development that impacts both economies, or a group of economies interested in doing business together,” she explained.
According to Ozemela, DIMA has a team of six in Doha that works on demand for projects. “If we have an exhibition demand, for example, a Brasil Expo in Qatar, we expand the team according to the projects that come to us,” she explains. “If a Brazilian company comes up to want to do business with Qatar, with Dubai, we can create business intelligence in other markets outside of Qatar, in the Gulf countries, so we have no limitations. We have Latin American clients who want to do business in the region because Qatar is very well positioned in the heart of the Gulf. Within a radius of 3,000 kilometers, there are 25 economies around Qatar”.
Trajectory
Brazilian from Porto Alegre, Ozemela was working in Washington, United States, when she met her husband, Nigerian Ugo Ozemela. She worked at the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). He is working at an American oil company. He moved to Doha for work four years ago, and she has been working for the IDB two years ago.
“I’ve had a business in Brazil, I started an IT company with 18 years, but in Qatar is different,” she says. “Qatari law requires majority ownership of a native partner. It took a while for me to find the stone path of how to set up a business where I had the freedom to make decisions.”
It was through contact with the Qatar Financial Center that Ozemela found a solution. “I met an executive director of the company and she told me about the possibility of starting a 100% company of mine through a free zone like Qatar Financial Center. It was obviously not that easy, but it was a very learning process after all and now we are established there with a world of opportunity”, she recalls.
Ozemela holds a Ph.D. in Economics of Discrimination, which covers gender and racial economics, and works with social impacts in Qatar, Brazil, and Nigeria with underprivileged populations such as women, African descendants, and indigenous people.
Agenda in Brazil
Luana Ozemela fulfilled an agenda in São Paulo on November 13th and 14th, when she participated in the Brazil Africa Forum 2019. At the time, she led a panel on the international trade scenario for productive agriculture. There she met with other Brazilian businessmen and agencies to talk about opportunities for Brazil, and her concern to promote gender equality in the business world. Luana then visited the Arab Brazilian Chamber of Commerce, where she met with Secretary-General Tamer Mansour.